More damning results related to fish are in from scientists studying BP's oil and Corexit catastrophe that began in 2010 with the company's and Transocean's Deepwater Horizon blowout.

The scientists are doing more than the government's highly criticized "Sniff Test" to determine the health of the Gulf fish people are eating. There's more evidence on the mountain that already exists that the Gulf food web has been dramatically altered since the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

In Virginia Key lab, a group of baby fish are being put on a tiny fish treadmill. The inch-long mahi-mahi, used as part of a study to assess BP's Deepwater Horizon Macondo oil well catastrophe damage that has been spreading crude across the Gulf of Mexico since 2010 and Corexit dispersant for years, were exposed as embryos to oil collected during the cleanup.

Now, at 25 days old, the oil and Corexit are doing exactly what scientists suspected: hampering the swimming of one of the ocean’s fastest fish, among other impairments. Many besides fish have been impaired, but the study focusing on fish, namely mahi.

Young mahi usually swim at five body lengths per second.

"For perspective, imagine a six-foot man swimming 30 feet in a second. The fish, struggling against a current in a little tube attached to a propeller called a swim tunnel, can only muster three body lengths." (Miami Herald) "For a fish that needs speed to survive, this could mean bad news. Mahi, one of the most popular fish on menus, is already heavily fished. So losing a generation to an oil spill could take a toll. It also suggests that other fish suffered from the spill."

“Any life form is optimized compromise,” Martin Grosell, one of the study’s authors, said as a way of explaining physiology perfectly evolved to maximize speed. And if you mess with that treaty of parts, he said, “you’re going to increase its vulnerability.”

The treadmill study marks the second in recent months by the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, that found oil from the largest spill in U.S. history damages young pelagic fish, the large predators found in the open ocean.

In March, UM researchers with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists determined BP's oil also damaged hearts of tuna embryos, a condition that likely killed them in the wild.

How many human embryos have been killed? That's another story, one being well-hidden.

Both fish studies have been disputed by BP. They are, however, worrisome, according to the Herald, because tuna, whose numbers have dropped by as much as 75 percent in the last 40 years, and mahi began their spring spawning just as the spill occurred, sending fragile embryos across warm surface waters and into a patchwork of oil slicks that covered more than six square miles.

These latest findings, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, build on that earlier report by looking at fish as they age.

BP says the study is invalid. It claims the tests used concentrations of oil not found in the Gulf during or after the spill. Researchers also failed to look at adult fish, spokesman Jason Ryan said in a statement.

The tests include nothing about the impact on human's strength or longevity or miscarriages...

“The tests only looked at impacts to fish under one year of age,” he said. “Even if there had been an effect on a single-year class of such fish, the study does not provide any evidence to show that an effect on that group of fish would have had a population-level impact.”

The BP catastrophe is classified as a human rights violation in that its oil contamination occurs daily throughout the Gulf region and is predictable, so it is not an accident.

Also, oOil VOC (volatile chemicals) acute health effects on humans include but are not limited to "headaches, dizziness and nausea," neurological disorders, and "[o]ver the long term, many of these chemicals have been linked to cancer, so there are lots of reasons to worry about inhaling them," advised scientist Gina Solomon.

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Author, columnist and rights defender Deborah Dupre' holds American and Australian science and education graduate degrees plus thirty years human rights, environmental and peace activism. Ms. Dupré has led Indigenous Pacific Islander and Australian Aborigine research; has consulted for the UN and other NGOs, holds the pivotal role in 'FUEL'; and has authored over 50 print publications. Contact Ms. Dupré here or visit her website, DeborahDupre.com, to leave a message there.